Not applicable
1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to the field of retail kiosks devices for providing information, goods and services to end-users. And more particularly, this present invention relates to the field of operating system functionality for kiosks.
2. Description of the Related Art
The use of kiosks to give end-users access to information, goods and services continues to grow. Kiosks can be standalone machines for distributing goods, such as, vending machines and informational centers that are typically found in major airports, automobile rental centers and shopping malls. Unattended multimedia kiosks dispense public information via computer screens. An end-user enters selections using a keypad, a touch screen or both. For example, a user at an automobile rental center, may select directions to a hotel and push a button to print a map.
A kiosk is usually a self-standing structure such as a newsstand or ticket booth. A kiosk is typically built around a microprocessor-based system such as a PC. The providers of Kiosks often use standard PC hardware, software and operating systems to reduce the cost of customization and reduce the need for custom software development tools. An example PC platform comprises and Intel compatible PC running Microsoft Windows or equivalent. Other kiosk hardware platforms used include PowerPC, RISC, and Alpha that run operating systems such as Windows 98/NT, OS/2, Unix and equivalents.
Another type of kiosk is a network kiosk. One of the more familiar network kiosks is an Automatic Teller Machine (ATM) that provides financial transactions to end-users. The networked kiosks, like the standalone kiosks, are designed around microprocessor-based systems in general, and more particularly based upon PCS. A more recent trend is to design network kiosks on thin-clients where the server on the network delivers to each kiosk on the network the applications, the data and even the operating system for the kiosk to run. Examples of network thin-client devices include NetPC, Java Terminals, set-top boxes and Internet Clients. Several retailers are setting up Intranet kiosks for use as informational kiosks, customer survey kiosk and point of sale terminals.
The use of standard hardware platforms and software platforms while lowering costs of the deployment of kiosks is not without its short comings. One short coming, when using standard applications such as HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language) compatible browsers are the presence of graphical artifacts. The display of HTML documents in standard browsers including Mosaic, Netscape Navigator and Microsoft Internet Explorer includes such items as title bars, elevator bars, window resizing icons and more. Referring to FIG. 1, there is shown a screen capture of a Web browser displaying the home page of the USPTO with the graphical artifacts 100. The specific graphical artifacts shown are the navigation tool bar 101 and location bar 102. These graphical elements are the result or artifacts of using commercially available HTML-compatible browsers for a kiosk application and these graphical artifacts are not desirable when presenting an end-user of a kiosk information. The providers of kiosks strive to maximize the available viewable area on a computer display without sacrificing any of the computer display area to these undesirable graphical artifacts that are common to popular HTML-compatible browsers.
Some providers of HTML-compatible browsers have enabled users to remove some of these graphical artifacts such as the browser menu, title bar, location indicator and toolbar, to allow the graphics to occupy a full screen. One example of a such a HTML-compatible browser is Netscape Communicator 4.0. FIG. 2 is a screen capture of Netscape Communicator 4.x with some of the graphical artifacts of FIG. 1 removed. However, there are still features of many operating systems, including Windows 3.1, 95, 98 and NT that present graphical information to users that is undesirable to the providers of kiosks who often strive to remove this information. One example of an undesirable graphical information is the status box of an operating system. These status boxes are also called dialog boxes, that xe2x80x9cpops-upxe2x80x9d to the foreground of the display information in response to a system event. A popular example of a status box is a print confirmation box 301 that appears when requesting a HTML-compatible browser to print a screen, as shown in FIG. 3. The end-user selecting a print button 103 with a keyboard and mouse is presented the print confirmation box 301. The display of this print confirmation box 301 detracts from the experience the kiosk provider is seeking. Therefore, a need exists to enable providers of kiosks a method to use commercially available operating systems and HTML-compatible browsers, without the display of dialog boxes or confirmation boxes from the operating system. Moreover, in many kiosk system deployments, the kiosk application is always forced to the foreground of the display screen, this causes any confirmation box requiring end-user confirmation, e.g., selecting the xe2x80x9cOKxe2x80x9d or xe2x80x9cCancelxe2x80x9d buttons, to be masked. Accordingly a need exists to overcome this problem.
Another short coming providers of kiosks face when using commercially available PC hardware and operating system is the occurrence of a system xe2x80x9ccrashxe2x80x9d or the system xe2x80x9clocking-upxe2x80x9d and xe2x80x9cfreezingxe2x80x9d. The use of a Reset Button or an On/Off Switch accessible to an end-user is undesirable in a kiosk environment. Therefore, a need exists to enable providers of kiosks a method to automatically recover from a system crash.
Still, another short coming providers of kiosks face when using commercially available PC hardware and operating system software is the inability to disable operating system responses to certain keyboard key combinations. Examples of undesirable operating system responses to keyboard key combinations include: re-booting by simultaneously depressing ctrl-Alt-Del keys as shown in FIG. 4; Start-Button display Ctrl-Esc keys on Windows 95, 98 or NT as shown in FIG. 5. These system responses to key combinations or mouse selections are undesirable and can detract from the kiosk environment itself. Kiosk providers do not want end-users performing operating system requests. Accordingly, a need exists to provide a method to disable responses to operating system level commands from end-users when using commercially available operating systems in a kiosk environment.
Briefly, in accordance with the present invention, disclosed is a method to intercept operating system messages in an informational processing device, the method comprising the steps of: waiting for an operating system message; determining if the message corresponds to a previously selected operating system message; and performing an operating system call that has been previously mapped to the selected operating system message.